How Much Garbage Does the United States Generate?

Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Materials Recovery, Combustion with Energy Recovery, and Discards in the United States: 1980 to 2006

(In millions of tons, except as indicated).

Even though the United States is producing more waste, in total and per capita, because of recycling and energy recovery the same amount (and less per person) ends up in the landfill today than did in 1980.

9 Comments

It’s nice to see that our efforts in recycling waste has made some progress. We just now need to reduce waste generated by each person. But, I was just thinking about this the other day, can we really reduce waste without the help from manufacturers/suppliers? To accommodate our lifestyle, I feel that packaging material has increased over the years. Sure that most material is now recyclable, but still not all. Take CD cases for example. You have to take it to special recycle centers. Pain in the ass, if you ask me. Good thing we’re moving on to digital download. Even plastic bags may not be accepted by your local recycling centers. We try to reduce and recycle, but it’s getting more confusing. Didn’t you do a piece on recycling way back? Might have to do a search on that blogpost and reread.

Brian
on January 6, 2009 at 12:07 am

I seem to recall doing something a while back but I might have deleted it in a site rebuild. Some other facts:

It is estimated that the world consumes between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags a year. If it requires approximately 430,000 gallons of oil to manufacture 100 million bags, then the United States uses 1,634,000,000 gallons of oil each year to manufacture the 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps that the EPA asserts are consumed in the U.S. each year. 1,634,000,000 gallons is the equivalent of 38,904,761 barrels of oil. While that is only about one-half of one-percent of the 7,300,000,000 barrels of oil used by the United States each year, retailers spend approximately $4 billion a year on plastic bags.

The Sierra Club has provided some information on the environmental impact of disposable bags:

* In New York City alone, one less grocery bag per person per year would reduce waste by 109 tons and save $11,000 in disposal costs.

* Plastic bags carry 80% of the nation’s groceries, up from 5% in 1982.

* When 1 ton of paper bags is reused or recycled, 3 cubic meters of landfill space is saved and 13 – 17 trees are spared! In 1997, 955,000 tons of paper bags were used in the United States.

* When 1 ton of plastic bags is reused or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil are saved.

Mike Beacom
on January 6, 2009 at 8:16 am

Some thoughts:

We’ve started using cloth grocery bags. Our local markets offer them for 99c each and give you a small discount each time you use them. They even make insulated ones should you decide to bike/walk to the store and want to pick up some frozen goods.

On my first trip to Germany in 1997, I was shopping at a local market and requested they bag my groceries. They charged me .10 marks (this was before the Euro) per bag. I was aghast, since bags in the US have always been free. Now, more than 10 years later, I understand. If you charge for the plastic bags, more people will use cloth. Generally, I’m in favor of letting the market control consumer behavior but in a case like this, I think a little financial incentive is a good idea.

Use plastic grocery bags in all the small waste baskets in your home. It will save you buying small garbage bags and they are usually just the right size for a bathroom waste basket.

If you pop into a store for a single item or two, when they ask you if you need a bag (and they almost always do), say “no”. It’s funny. I just noticed that they always ask me and I was always saying “yes” without a thought. Then I was always throwing away these tiny useless bags. You know, the ones they might put a CD or a small electronics purchase in. When I started to refuse them, it actually catches them offguard. Apparently no one refuses them, but honestly who needs them?

The plastic bag on the inside of your serial box is recyclable. It’s a #2HDPE. I wrote to customer service of General Mills and Post and they both said it’s recyclable. For years I’ve been recycling my serial boxes, but not the bags because I didn’t know what number they were and I read that its hard on recyclers to put things in the sort that they have to remove causing extra work. I’ve requested that General Mills and Post place the recyclable number 2 on the box or bag to let consumers know it’s recyclable.

i try to use the cloth bags. sometimes I forget them. Seems like a lot of stores are selling them, evening Kohls etc.
And I try and buy the cleaning products that you can buy just the refill stuff to replace it.

Mike Beacom
on January 6, 2009 at 11:12 pm

Thats a good one Niki, refillable soaps and whatnot are very eco-friendly. On that note, may I recommend Simple Green. Its a cleaner/degreaser and it’s all natural and you can buy it in a gallon jug. Its super concentrated so the gallon gets mixed with water depending on how strong you want it and can usually mix about 3-4 gallons of cleaner. I use an old windex bottle to dispense. It works great. I’ve used it on everything from floors (in a super diluted solution) to degreasing my bicycle chain (about 50/50 solution with water).

Also, rereading my post, I got a small chuckle. You can tell a guy is in a networking field when he spells “cereal” as “serial”. Duh.

Mike, “taxing” plastic bags has been met with some considerable success. In 2002, Ireland instituted a plastic bag tax. This tax requires customers to pay 33 cents per bag if they want to use a disposable bag from the store. Given how ingrained disposable bags are in society, you’d think that this would have proved to be extremely unpopular. Surprisingly, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent almost immediately. Over the course of the next year, the entire Irish society bought into the concept of reusable cloth bags. Today, disposable bags are more or less socially unacceptable in Ireland.